Freedom Walk: A walk to claim, ensure and preserve freedom

Free software had remained a technological and an economic issue in
the state of Kerala and it had been very successful in being so. A
team of four people decided to take the fundamental principle of the
freedom behind free software and take this message of freedom to the
masses in Kerala. They decided to project free software as an
empowering agent to change the lives of people and in solving social,
environmental and technological issues. They wanted to take free
software and the freedom behind it to the common man in Kerala.

For doing this they decided to follow the Gandhian concept of walking,
and walk they did. The quartet -- Anoop John, Cherry George Mathew,
Prasad S. R. and Sooraj K. -- decided to walk from one end of Kerala to
the other end, covering 1200+ kilometers, and preach this message
directly to people. They also decided to follow a simple lifestyle --
no posh food, no paid stays, eating from small hotels and utilizing
only public places to rest and stay. They decided to start on the
birthday of Gandhiji -- Oct 2 -- from Kasargode and end at
Trivandrum on Nov 14 -- the birthday of another great Indian
leader Jawaharlal Nehru.

The free software community in Kerala embraced this walk and
successfully organized 49 formal functions
including seminars, public meetings, formal receptions and
media interactions during this journey. This was on top of the very
large and uncounted number of interactions they had on their way
with people they met on the roads. The smallest formal functions
would have been ones where 10-15 people attended (e.g.,
Agricultural University, Padanakkadu) whereas the largest
ones would have been ones where 500+ people attended
(e.g., Reception at Baselious College, Kottayam,
Reception at BCM College, Kottayam). The median attendance
would have been around 30 per meeting.
Mass media in Kerala also liked this campaign for its
novelty and its message and covered the walk end to end. A detailed list
of all the formal programs conducted by the freedom walkers is
at
http://www.freedomwalk.in/content/freedom-walk-list-of-conducted-programs.

More than half of the formal functions, 28 to be exact, were conducted in
educational institutions where the freedom-walkers conveyed the message
of freedom and exhorted the students to embrace this freedom.
In some places they had the opportunity to address the entire
institution including teaching, non-teaching staff, and students, e.g.,
Vocational Higher Secondary School, Irimpanam; whereas in some places
they addressed only faculty members, e.g., Agricultural
University, Padanakkadu; NUALS,Cochin. These occasions were
also utilized to convey to these students that the Freedom Walkers
were following the Gandhian principle of "being the change they wished
to see in the world." We can hope that the determination and the will
of the freedom-walkers would very likely have inspired at least a few
in their audiences to take very strong and life-changing
decisions around these ideas.

The meetings generally had 3 sessions: a) message about being the
change we wished to see in the world, b) introduction to the concept
of freedom in software, its underlying philosophies and how free
software can change our world, c) how people can join the movement,
how they can get help, how they can contribute to the movement
and through this how they can build careers in free software.

The formal functions were also used as a means to get connections
established between the educational institution and the local free
software communities. Messages about the existence and the activities
of local free software users groups were given with instructions on
how to join and participate in these communities.

The walk, zig-zagging across Kerala to cover all the fourteen
districts, also effectively brought together the local communities in
these districts around a common need to organize and
participate
in the Freedom Walk. This has resulted in better networking
between these communities as has been evident from the
cross-list involvement of free software users in the FSUG
mailing lists in Kerala.

The campaign was very novel in terms of the origin (non-governmental
and purely community based), in terms of the organization (totally
owned and distributively organized by free software communities locally),
and in terms of the physical involvement (that of walking for 44 days).
The quartet has photo-documented (with around 8000 photos) their
complete journey and they have also blogged on a daily basis during
these days. The blog and photos are available at
http://www.freedomwalk.in. Freedom Walk concluded on the 14th of November
at a public function organized by the free software users group
Trivandrum and chaired by the IT Secretary of the Government of Kerala.